Doing my part to save the planet by recycling pics.
The last time I attempted a pairing with one of these pizzas, it was an unmitigated disaster. This time, however, I was working off the recent experiences of one “Doug,” Beerlicious contributor. Doug had a good experience pairing up a Belgian strong dark with Italian food, so I figured that was a good direction to go with this tomato and pesto heavy meal.
See the above-linked post for more details on the pizza, but the dominant flavors are from the tomato sauce, pesto, and mozzarella. And indeed, it all worked rather well with this Belgian strong dark.
17 years of perfection, guys. Cheers.
The beer was remarkable. Burnt toffee, plum, raisin, and — call me crazy — I was getting some whiskey flavors. A little vanilla from some oak? Definitely some liquor flavors in there and some alcohol bite. A really marvelous brew.
Definitely on the malty end of the spectrum, not hoppy at all… kind of like the doppelbock, which bombed next to this same pizza. But while the doppelbock was the epitome of unadulterated, thick malty richness, BSDs have tremendous amounts of flavor coming from yeast, alcohol, and often Belgian candi syrup. Those flavors overwhelm the subtle contributions of the likes of munich and vienna malts.
And among Belgian-style beers, few do them better than Canadian Unibroue. Those guys have a tremendous world class lineup. And the dark fruity, toffee, whiskey-like flavors of Unibroue 17 were excellent with pizza. Some higher class Italian pairings with BSDs are definitely in my future.
Tags: Hearth Italia Pizza, pesto, Unibroue
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